Embrace: Journeys in Neurodiversity

The Golden Hour: Transforming Futures Through Early Intervention

When do you need to evaluate your child’s behaviour?

This episode, we dive deep into the world of assessments. Discover how these tools can provide a comprehensive look into your child’s mind and needs and give you knowledge to help you , while learning how to best navigate the educational system with this knowledge.

Assessments are helpful to all, from children to parents and educators.

In this insightful episode, we dive deep into the world of psychoeducational assessments with expert guests Sofia Lopez Nakashima and Dr. Jennifer Fane. This episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating the complexities of learning differences and seeking actionable strategies to support unique learners.


Join us to uncover how psychoeducational assessments and other formal and informal assessments can unlock a path to success for learners and help create a more supportive educational environment.

Want to learn more about us? You can go to https://ldsociety.ca/

Guest Information:

Sofia Lopez Nakashima, Senior Manager, Assessments, LDS
Dr. Jennifer Fane, Lead Research Associate, Education and Skills, Conference Board of Canada 

Resources:

IEPs and Accommodations:  

What is Embrace: Journeys in Neurodiversity ?

Welcome to Embrace, a heartfelt podcast series led by Rachel Forbes, Executive Director of LDS - Learn. Develop. Succeed. Drawing on her rich experience in community building, social justice, and nonprofit leadership, Rachel takes you on an intimate journey through the life of Mason—a remarkable individual whose story of navigating dyslexia and ADHD offers powerful insights into the world of neurodivergence.
Through Mason’s story, from his early years in preschool to adulthood, we explore the first signs of learning differences, how they evolve over time, and the impact of a strong, supportive community. Alongside educators, neurodivergence experts, passionate parents, and allies, Embrace shatters stigmas, highlights the unique gifts of neurodivergent learners, and offers empowering strategies for building confidence and self-esteem.
Join us as we celebrate the power of educational and social-emotional supports that embrace each unique learner for who they are—and who they can become.

EP Production Team (00:01.579)
Hi, I'm Rachel Forbes. I'm a passionate mother, an advocate, a partner, a friend, and an ally. I bring those identities and my experience in community building, social justice, and nonprofit leadership to my role as Executive Director at LDS, Learn, Develop, Succeed. Over the next few weeks, I will lead you through the story of a beautiful soul named Mason.

from preschool through to adulthood. We get to witness Mason's early years, exploring the first signs of potential learning differences like dyslexia and brain-based differences like ADHD. In this series, we will feature educators from LDS, experts on neurodivergence, as well as passionate parents and allies who make up the community that rallied around Mason. Along the way, we'll reveal the gifts

that unique learners offer. Shatter some stigmas about neurodivergence, explore ways to build confidence and self-esteem, and offer a path forward. A path paved by educational and social emotional supports that embrace each unique learner for just who they are and for who they can choose to be. This is Embrace.

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As Mason gets older, his struggles with reading and resistance to it continue. He demonstrates more avoidant behaviour procrastinating, distracting himself and ignoring tasks altogether. And as his family gathers more information, it becomes clear that an assessment is necessary. With a background in neuropsychology with an emphasis in education, Sofia Lopez Nakashima has been administering

and interpreting psychometric testing to students at different ages for nearly a decade, working with complex learners with learning differences that are socially and culturally diverse and multilingual. That's just what she does as the Senior Manager of Assessment at LDS. Well, assessment is a process. It's a process of gathering information, interpreting, and using all the information that we can get.

to making informed decisions about a person's cognitive, social, academic, and emotional functioning. Let's say it's a way to understand an individual's strengths and challenges. And assessments, it is kind of like an umbrella term, because it has broad dimension. You can have the informal assessments or dynamic assessments.

These informal assessments focus on students learning by interacting with them. It's more of a, yes, we have something that we're going to assess, but we use the observation and we do have flexibility. When, okay, the student might not be doing well by sitting just still in a chair, so maybe we can try on the floor. So you have the flexibility in informal assessments to change the setting and change the time.

versus a standardized assessment is super structured and it provides a snapshot of students ability. But in these ones, it allows you to compare with norms and standards. So you can compare your child's specific ability to compare to its peers. Great. And then if my child or if a child that we're speaking about does have learning differences or learning disabilities, then

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How does that compare with peers? Are there any dangers in comparing them with their peers? Does that work in standardized assessment? What does it tell us? If you have a child who struggles with learning and you do an assessment, if you do a standardized assessment, it will come up lower compared to experience. So that's what we call in the curve of how the learners learn. It will tell you.

it is lower compared to its peers because this standardized assessment measure based on the academic skills or cognitive skills that are, it's like, this is equal for everybody. This is the IQ for everyone's and it doesn't have this flexibility or adaptation, but it will provide you with a snapshot of, okay, your student has these strengths and these weaknesses. So let's focus on these areas.

So we can work on, yeah, it is below grade level, let's say one grade level or two grade levels, but it will improve, obviously, if we target these areas of weaknesses and we focus on their strengths. And in standardized assessment, I want to mention that we have some types of assessments. So there are the level.

B assessments that require also a professional with a background in psychology or education and training in specific tests like the KTE that we do here. And we also have the Level C assessments that require a higher level of expertise. Often it is done by a licensed psychologist or a registered psychologist or someone with a specialist training. So when families are going on this journey of

trying to find and acquire a psych-ed assessment and then they get one. What kinds of things do we see in a psych-ed that we usually call that shorthand a psych-ed for psychoeducational assessment or neuro-psychological assessment too. What kinds of things is that going to tell us about a learner and they're often very complex documents. So what do we see in there that's helpful for families to know about?

EP Production Team (05:59.352)
Well, I do love psychoeducational assessments and I like that it gives you a picture, an entire picture of how your child works in like cognitive speaking, also academic skills and behaviour. So it gives you a picture of the whole individual. It's not just one area. And it is hard to get a psychoeducational assessment right now in BC because there is a long waiting list.

and maybe we don't have the capacity of, there is in BC, like we don't have a lot of registered psychologists who has the designations who can do actually the psychoeducational assessments. And we do have a lot of students that need these in order to get an IEP, right? So it can be a stressful path, but it is worth it. Definitely it is worth it going through it. We have a blog on our website about

how can you get a diagnosis and how to support your child after a diagnosis and understanding what is a psychoeducational assessment. So this psychoeducational assessment will give you a full understanding of your child and it will help you addressing his specific needs that it requires at that specific moment. It will involve also not just

Yeah, a standardized assessment will also involve a conversation with teachers, with parents, observation and documentation from both parents and teachers. And that will give us a whole idea, a whole picture of the student. And with that, we can target and create an intervention within their school or with an external support.

These assessments help empower families that are navigating educational systems because it helps them understand their children better. For educators like Dr. Jennifer Fain, who spent the better part of 18 years being in academic and applied conversations about learning and education, working in the area of neurodivergence, she knows how an accurate assessment can help feedback into the classroom and build a support circle for children. But what does the assessment process actually look like on paper?

EP Production Team (08:25.134)
Yeah, so having a diagnosis either through a recent psychoeducational assessment or a diagnosis of a medical or physical health condition, it is used to trigger a process in which a child can receive a ministry designation or a designation from the Ministry of Education in BC. So a parent would book a time with the school or contact the school to set up a school-based team meeting in which they would bring through the documentation they have.

documentation that needs to be quite rigorous. It generally wouldn't just be from a GP, it would probably be from a specialist or sort of be a full assessment. And then that assessment would be used alongside a teacher report and possible parent reports of behaviour or challenges or learning challenges. And then it would be used against a checklist from the ministry which has criteria that would be required for each of the different lettered designations.

In BC, we have letters A down through K and those letters respond to different types of designations. So for dyslexia, that would respond to a Q designation. Q designation is for learning disabilities, which would include dyslexia, written output disorder, dyscalculia. And just a note too that actually psychologists have moved away from the term dyslexia. It tends to be just specific learning disorder and learning disorder reading. So in case you're listening and you're like, hmm.

Dyslexia, dyslexia and specific learning disability and reading are essentially the same thing. They're just a change in language. So once a child has it, so they have a diagnosis and then that diagnosis gets turned into a designation through the schooling system. So it might be a Q for learning disabilities. It could be a G for autism or a K for intellectual, moderate intellectual disability. That designation then tells

That letter will give an understanding of that child's general learning profile. That being said, children even within the same letter designation have different experiences, different needs, different strengths and stretches. So as part of that process, the designation will also trigger the creation of an IEP or an individualized education plan. This plan outlines the child's strengths and challenges, as well as the accommodations that would need to be made in the learning process. Though legally,

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A school is not required to write an IEP without a ministry designation. It's next to impossible to get a ministry designation without an assessment or critical diagnosis. So in some ways it works perfectly and in other ways it can cause huge barriers for families along the way. Educational assessments right now in BC are sort of nine months at minimum and they can stretch even further far out. So there often is that waiting period where like what do we do? What can we do?

For parents and families in that, the best thing to do would be to use the best information you currently have about what your child's needs are to identify supports, resources or programs that would be a good fit for them. So your child's classroom teacher and their most recent report card is going to be really good evidence.

You can also ask your school to do a level B assessment for you as well. The resource teachers there are able to do that, or there's also other providers that can do those types of assessments with a much shorter wait time. The best thing about other informal types of assessments are that they can be carried out in more natural settings, like the classroom, or depending on the need and learner, like Mason, the playground. Actually, the informal assessments are more flexible and can include observations, checklists.

Even a teacher-made test and portfolios of students work. And the practical thing about this assessment is that it can be carried out in a natural setting, such as in the classroom or the playground or wherever they feel confident. So it will give you a picture of how a child functions in their daily environment. And it is really, really valuable.

Because they allow educators and parents and psychologists to see how a child actually applies their skills in real life situations. So these types of assessment is particularly useful for understanding a child's behaviour, social interaction, and engagement with learning activities in real time. And then just contrasting that with something like a standardized assessment.

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What kind of environment are those administered in and what are maybe some of the challenges that some students might have in undergoing a standardized assessment? Yeah, so a formal assessment, a standardized assessment is structured, is standardized, that are administered under controlled conditions. So this cannot be on their classroom or on the playground. This has to be in a specific quiet area. And it does provide you data.

that is mostly quantitative and the value of this type of assessment is that it lies in their ability to provide the data that can be compared to a norm or a group. But on the downside, you can sometimes you can misinterpret the data from assessments. So these assessments can be powerful, but also limiting because test scores might not capture the full complexity of a child's ability.

or the influence of external factors like anxiety or fatigue or cultural differences. And of course, these standardized assessments will provide more stress and anxiety because it's not the same pressure to perform something in an environment that you already know that you're familiar with into a different setting, different environment with someone that you don't know. And also another downside.

is that sometimes it over-emphasizes on the weaknesses. So it often focuses on identifying areas of need and weaknesses in our students. So it leads to an over-emphasis of what my student cannot do, rather than celebrating their strengths, which I think that's the downside.

EP Production Team (14:43.456)
Informal or diagnostic assessments that can be run quickly or by teachers and without great cost or wait times can give a good understanding of whether there are gaps around reading, writing, or math skills. Those are the big areas that are typically identified for young children. We also hope that assessment with interpretation support can help parents get excited about how to support learners for their specific areas of need with programming.

If a child is struggling and an assessment comes back and there's no underlying issue, but they're still struggling, there would still need to be something put in place for that child. Obviously, it's just something is not quite right or the way that they need their learning is not being delivered. Just something's not quite clicking for that child for whatever that is. So look at the challenge. If it's reluctance to read, then what are supports you can have that are going to help your child be reading or engaged in reading or hearing, being read to in a safe and supportive environment?

And probably the other big thing on there is just to try to keep the learning challenge or learning in that area enjoyable, even when it can be a source of stress for your child. So if reading is really, really stressful and they absolutely don't want to do it, then what are some ways you can work in some of those skills without essentially forcing a child to do something they're feeling really unsuccessful at?

So that's sometimes when finding a program that has a fun theme to it or a practitioner that knows how to do game-based learning or a program that really focuses on child's individual interests are really going to help them to be cautiously willing to try learning something new and then building that relationship with that person who's delivering the program or the intervention is going to be really key. At LDS, families approach the team looking at a psych ed report that they've received. And obviously there's so much information that is overwhelming.

clinical terminology and terms, a diagnosis that is not necessarily clear, and families have come to LDS and said, we have a specific learning disability in reading. What should we do? I think every time we go and talk about psycheducational assessments and diagnosis, everybody gets confused between, but my child doesn't have dyslexia. It has some learning differences in reading. And yeah, the same example that you just gave. So the thing is that the diagnosis are

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based on a DSM manual, and that is by the American Psychology Association, and that also the Canadian Psychology Association takes it. And the language has changed. And this language makes parents anxious and stressed about how to support their kids. I think everybody freaks out when they think about, my God, my child is going to be a SES, and they even want to read a day before, no? Let's practice reading before you go and actually do some reading with the...

with whoever is going to do the assess with you. So I will give some recommendation and the first one is don't stress out because you will stress out your child also in order to go and have these psych-educational assessments. So one thing parents can do is observe and document. Documenting, observation can provide valuable insights and that will inform the assessment process and help you identify areas of need.

So if you know that your child already struggles with reading, you can document and observe. Like whenever we go to the public library, he just don't grab any book. He just goes straight to the videos or something like that. So you can observe and document that as a parent and provide whoever is going to assess your child with that information. Also, we need open and ongoing communication between parents and educators.

This is crucial because sharing observations and concerns and progress can help create a clearer picture of the child's development because maybe the teacher says, no, but here it grabs the book and goes by himself to the silent reading area and just reads. Yeah, but maybe he's not even actually reading. He's just going through the pictures to the book. So that open communication between what is happening at school and at home, it is crucial.

is really beneficial and always monitor developmental milestones. So I know as a parent and an educator should be aware of typical developmental milestones and monitor the child's progress in reaching them. We go back to no one is the same and no one develops at the same pace, but just know some important milestones. Okay, maybe my baby wasn't able to crawl and maybe my baby

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My child when he was three, he was just saying two words instead of actually saying a full sentence when at that age that's the milestone. Having those milestones in mind will also help and also build strong relationship with your child. So make him or her feel that they are in a trusted environment, that nothing is gonna happen, that it's just something that

It will help people get a clearer picture of how they learn, how they behave, that it's something normal, that they need to feel confident, they need to feel safe, and they need to feel that understood. Like, okay, we know that you are struggling at school, and we are going to this place to understand that why, why is this happening? And this is nothing. This is something normal.

that we want to go and do so we can understand you better and we can help and support you better. And also educate yourself as a parent and as a teacher. Parents, teachers can benefit from learning about child development, stones, resources that are available. What does it mean that now it's changing, right? Like educators and parents need to know

that now our learning differences in reading is actually these legs, yeah. So knowing all these little things will support a lot. The mission at LDS is to provide programming that is accessible, innovative, and research-informed for learners at every stage of their journey. Whether they're in kindergarten or newly diagnosed as an adult, they believe that individualized learning support, advocacy tools,

and trusted resources is just the start of a full system that can truly change their lives.

EP Production Team (21:35.34)
In the next episode, as Mason heads into middle school, we talk about the important role of community when supporting individuals with learning differences. When I'm trying to speak to students and young people about this, it's always a matter of letting them know that there is a framework in place. In order to have a safe, neuro-affirming place, there have to be ground rules about it. And what's right for one student at one point in their life?

isn't going to be right for them three years later. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. And how kids like Mason can benefit from his new community. That's all for today. Embrace is an everything podcast production, an award winning team focused on engaging storytelling that connects with its audience in a meaningful and memorable way. Our showrunner is Rithu Jagannath and our audio engineer and sound mixer is Scott Whitaker.

And if you like the show, please rate and follow it. It helps us reach more listeners like you. Until next time, embrace your kids.

EP Production Team (22:47.532)
another Everything Podcasts production. Visit everythingpodcasts.com. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.